1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to sound pickup assembly means and more particularly to a novel sound pickup assembly for use in a binaural sound recording system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has been well known to have a binaural recording system for stereophonic recording. Such systems are effective for the use of headphones in the reproduction and the listener feels as if he is present in the concert hall due to the favorable acoustic characteristics.
It has been known in the prior art to have stethoscope type devices in which a pair of microphone units are respectively attached to an arcuate resilient pipe at the opposite ends and a pair of projections are attached to the microphone units for inserting the ends of the pipe into the listener's auditory canals. An output is supplied from the center of the resilient pipe. However, since this device is used for sound pickup by being directly attached to human ears after a long time during which sound pickup occurs the user experiences pain because of the attachment of the device to his head. Also, with such device when the human head is moved very much the picked up sound can be distorted and appear unnatural.
For the above reasons a dummy head imitating a human head is normally used in binaural recording systems. Such prior art dummy heads are quite similar in shape to a human head having a human face and persons sitting in the audience as, for example, in a concert who observe such dummy pickups are unpleasantly affected by such devices. For example if a number of such dummy heads similar to human faces or heads are disposed in a concert hall or the like the entire atmosphere of the hall becomes unpleasant for human listeners present at the concert and, thus, the appreciation of the music is decreased for the persons present at the concert.
It has also been proposed in the prior art to provide a dummy head having dummy external ears attached to a cubical shaped box which is not similar to a human head or face. However, in dummy pickups of this type, the reproduction does not give the sense of direction and distance which is desireable in stereophonic binaural sound pickup devices.